Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

What to Listen to, Read, and Action This Week

By

 1. The truth about water planning in the Murray Darling Basin:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/water-issues/axe-murraydarling-plan-and-start-again-us-expert-20110304-1bi62.html

2.  Marian Wilkinson reports on the tough political decisions ahead in the fight over the biggest water reform in Australian history. “Backlash in the Basin” goes to air Monday 7 March, 8.30pm on ABC 1. It is replayed on Tuesday 8th March at 11.35 pm.  http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/

3.  Protests in each city are being organised against the Carbon Tax on Wednesday March 23. 
For more information:

Stop Gillard’s carbon tax page  http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_113660108709587#!/pages/Stop-Gillards-Carbon-Tax/197122506973202

 Revolt against the carbon tax page http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_113660108709587

 Petition against the carbon tax page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Gillards-Carbon-Tax/197122506973202?sk=app_4949752878

4.  And later this week I will be posting more on electricity generation from Tony.

***********

Consider this an open thread.  Let other readers of this blog know what you are watching, listening to, and reading, this week by way of a comment.

And consider donating to the continued operation of this blog.   There is an orange button at the top right hand corner of this page.   Much thanks to those who have made a donation recently.

This blog is about community, and access to information.  Information that is not politically correct or even fashionable…  But hopefully well considered.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Neville says

    The EIA has published it’s latest projections and co2 emissions are prominent and really very revealing.

    OECD countries will virtually flatline until 2035 with an increase of 0.1% per annum, while non OECD countries will increase by an an average of 2% or TWENTY times that of the OECD.

    By 2035 the total co2 emissions of OECD countries will be about half that of non OECD countries.

    Just confirms how stupid Juliar and labor are to penalise Australia with a carbon tax that at best will reduce our emissions by 5% ( BS I know) or reduce our emissions from 1.3% to 1.23%, that is a massive saving of .07% or seven hundredths of 1%.

    Here it is. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/emissions.html#30

  2. TonyfromOz says

    Neville,
    on that same subject, this can be directly related back to the original Kyoto Protocol from the UNFCCC. In that Protocol, the UN split 192 Countries into two sections, one Annex of 40 Countries (all Developed) and the remaining 152 (all not Developed)

    Those 152 Countries needed to do nothing except report their emissions, full stop.

    Then from those 40 Countries they split out 23 of them who had to reduce their emissions to a level 5 to 7% lower than what they were in 1992, introduce an ETS, or a ‘Price On Carbon Emissions’ and from that that, forward part of that money to the UN to pay ALL the costs of those other 152 nations to reduce their emissions, and to introduce renewable technologies.

    And yes, Australia was in that list of 23 Countries, and yes, China and India are in that list of 152 Countries.

    Kyoto had a Sunset clause of 2012 for a replacement mechanism.

    Perhaps now you can gain some insight into why Copenhagen and Cancun failed so miserably.

    Why would those 152 Countries want to replace an already legal mechanism with a new one that is going to alter what the original deal was.

    Those non OECD Countries can do whatever they like, because the UN told them it was OK, and all they needed to do was report their emissions.

    Tony.

  3. val majkus says

    More on China’s Clayton Carbon cap from Ken Stewart
    http://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2011/03/05/chinas-claytons-carbon-cap/
    Four times I heard on ABC radio this morning, confirmed by a Google search, that China has unveiled a plan to produce 11% of its power from non-fossil (i.e. nuclear) fuels by 2015, and to cap its energy consumption from fossil fuels at 4 billion tonnes of coal equivalent. Wow! And just in time to shame Australians who aren’t keen on Julia Gillard’s (or anyone’s ) Carbon Tax.

    Except this is not a Carbon Tax, but government regulation. Now what was it the Opposition was proposing?

    I thought I’d run the old Reality Check calculator over these reported figures.
    …check it out and leave a comment

  9. paul walter says

    Am not sure how to take this thread.
    Is it a solicitation for comments on ecological problems, or a T-party symposium?
    Pleeeeaaase.
    No more “fear and loathing” on MD and carbon tax?
    I watched 4Corners last night and feel like putting a bomb under Joyce and his agribusiness mates- these people are holding up moves that would guarantee their livelihoods, but the attitude I saw shining through was this sense that”we’ll make a quick buck now and b-gger the next generation, we’ll be dead, it doesn’t matter.
    Do folk from Griffith, St George catchment etc think they can take their loot to heaven with them?
    One, I doubt whether they’ll be getting there, so what happens to all this loot they’ve garnered at the countries expense, when they kark it?

  10. el gordo says

    It’s an open thread, Paul. As I live in the MDB and understand the debate, last night’s show said nothing new.

    We grow food to fill your belly, which is something you have obviously overlooked. The river system has been poorly over the past decade, but should remain healthy for the next 20 years because of a cool IPO.

    Just a word of warning, saying you feel like putting a bomb under a politician is a snipping offense and imprudent. Particularly as your name is up front.

  11. val majkus says

    good article by Terry McCrann
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/terry-mccranns-column/carbon-not-the-same-thing-as-co2/comments-e6frfig6-1226017312737

    the first few paras:

    ASTONISHINGLY, the PM, the Cabinet and members of the Canberra Press Gallery don’t know the difference between carbon and carbon dioxide.

    There are two great lies told about the need to “put a price on carbon”. Lies which I can’t recall a single member of the gallery ever confronting the liars with — far less the prime liar herself.

    And it’ll be a cold day in hell before you see a critical commentary from any of the supposed leading lights of the gallery such as Fairfax’s Michelle Grattan or Peter Hartcher applying a critical analysis to the claims.

    Now these two lies are in addition to Julia Gillard’s “there will be no carbon tax” lie. They precede it and will be told again and again after it.

    The first is that “climate change policies” are aimed at “carbon pollution”. No they are not; they are aimed at reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.

    (another couple of paras)
    The second great lie is that so-called “de-carbonising our economy” as a consequence of “putting a price on carbon” is the 21st century equivalent of the tariff reforms of the 1980s.

    In fact it is the exact opposite: it is the equivalent of imposing tariffs on the Australian economy. This is true whether or not the rest of the world follows. It’s just that much worse if we do it solo.

    This lie has been peddled not just by the government but also by Treasury. Be afraid, be really afraid that we have a Treasury which is that incompetent.

    Cutting tariffs and other forms of protection removed artificial costs that were imposed on both producers and consumers. It enabled them to buy especially goods but also services at the lowest competitive price.

    The carbon tax or an ETS (emissions trading scheme) does the exact opposite. It imposes a totally artificial additional cost, in its case, on everything consumers and business buy.

  12. Snirtus says

    Paul,

    I wonder what an environmentalist’s ideal world would look like?

    Should the rivers stop running in time of severe drought, should the wetlands dry up?
    I would have thought that was the natural way of things!

    Or should there always be running rivers, wetlands always full of breeding birds, predictable & reliable rainfall. Richard Kingsford seems to think so.

    From my observations, these changing seasons sift the grain from the chaff & leave us with the best adapted species or individuals.

    I doubt Paul would last long if he had to make his living from the land!

  13. TonyfromOz says

    Val,
    you beat me to this article by an hour.
    Wonderful stuff.
    At last someone is referring to it by its full title, Carbon Dioxide.

    At that link Val has provided, click on the link at the bottom that says ‘Read Full Story’.

    The article is titled ‘It’s Not Carbon Grit’, and I see that they are still showing images of the cooling towers emitting harmless cooling steam, that other Greenhouse Gas, Water Vapour which is 51 times more prevalent than for CO2
    .
    Later in the piece is a wonderful little statement that Val did not include, where it says:

    “For if carbon dioxide can be called “carbon pollution”, in this or any other universe, in this or any other reality, well then rain has to be called “hydrogen pollution”.”

    I had to laugh at that.

    Tony.

  14. paul walter says

    Val Majkus is of course aware of the fable of the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.
    One of the sad repetitive facts of history is that humans get hold of a region, flog the daylights out of it, and all you have left is desert. Civilisations have fallen on this trait, but nowhere do folk learn from history.

  15. el gordo says

    ‘…and all you have left is desert’. It has happened in the past, but it won’t happen in the MDB, because we took it from a semi-arid desert and made it fertile. The system is now replenished and should remain drought free for at least two decades – good seasons have returned.

    As the NH turns cool and wet, because of natural variability, the MDB will become a valuable resource and we would be mad not to take advantage of the times.

    Stop the water buy-back now!

  16. wes george says

    Our good PM is in Washington for her Andy Warhol’ 15-minutes of fame at the feet of the living God-Emperor.

    Later, still flushed from the awesome audience, is asked by the ABC what she makes of Abbott’s Fear campaign against Bob’s Carbon Tax. She says it’s “easy to stoke a fear” campaign against Bob’s carbon tax. Which we all know isn’t really a tax at all. Nonsense! It’s the “Price” we have to pay for our sins.

    So Julia is worried that Abbott has started a fear campaign against the Green/labor fear campaign?

    Isn’t that like a double negative? How can you have a fear campaign against a fear campaign? And isn’t Julia’s likening of Liberal rhetoric on the carbon tax as a fear campaign, really just another fear campaign?… A fear campaign against a fear campaign directed against the original CAGW fear campaign?

    I’m confused.

    Then Walter shows up and calls for an end to the uncivil “fear and loathing” campaign against the fear and loathing campaign waged by the CAGW acolytes.

    Fine. I’m all for ending the cycle of fear! And loathing too!

    But besides engaging in a little uncivil violently eliminationist rhetoric (which I’ve bookmark for later analysis) he can’t resist a bit of fearmongering too. Suggesting all we’ll have left is desert if the farmers have it their way. You know, like in history someplace. You illiterate teabaggers. Ozymandias, Ramesses, et al…We’re repeating their mistakes, folks!!!

    Well, I suppose Bob Brown is kind like an eunuch. But doesn’t that make Julia Cleopatra? I’ll stick with the old Hollywood standard.

    But what about this desert stuff?

    Paul Walters might want to update his CAGW talking points with Luke “Dancing in the Rain” Walker.

  17. val majkus says

    there’s an article on wuwt by Prof Carter
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/07/helmut-schmidt-calls-for-ipcc-inquiry/#comments
    Helmut Schmidt, the respected former Chancellor of Germany, has told an audience at the Max-Plank-Gesellschaft that a full inquiry needs to be held into the credibility of advice on global warming that stems from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

    Prof Carter’s conclusion
    The Max-Plank-Gesellschaft is Germany’s most eminent science organisation, and that Helmut Schmidt should deliver his lecture there is highly symbolic. But in calling for an investigation by one of Germany’s “top scientific organisations”, Schmidt shows that he only appreciates part of the problem, which is the integrity of the IPCC. An equal problem in nearly all western countries (Russia perhaps excluded) is the integrity of their national science academies and leading organisations, nearly all of whom, under the leadership of the Royal Society of London, have been acting as cheerleaders for the IPCC for the last ten years or more. Remember, too, that no fewer than three independent inquiries into last year’s Climategate (leaked email) scandal at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, ended up as anodyne whitewashes, and this despite the undoubted “distinction” of the chairmen of the inquiries.

    Helmut Schmidt is undoubtedly right to call for a searching inquiry into the IPCC, but any such inquiry will need to be conducted by a special, independent scientific audit group with full legal powers. For, to be effective, any review of the IPCC is going to need to also investigate the actions of other leading national and international science organisations.

    ——————————————————————————–

    my comment
    I agree with Professor Carter that the IPCC needs auditing; the question which international body has the acceptable compentency to do this;
    There is no body that I can think of which would be accepted by both sides of the debate (the warmists and the sceptics)
    My view is that the IPCC should be disbanded and that each Govt who proposes or has followed its findings should have a Royal Commission to determine whether or not the IPCC findings in respect to carbon dioxide are sustainable or not
    That means that NZ, UK; the European Union etc should have a Royal Commission
    and that includes Aust whose Govt is currently proposing a ‘carbon tax’
    The IPCC has in my view been discredited so there should be no reliance on its findings any more
    The UN in my view has passed its ‘use by’ date and now it’s up to each country to determine whether or not there is AGW and whether or not as a result there should be a tax on man made carbon dioxide
    My view – I prefer Professor Carter’s view – (most diplomatically expressed by him) adaption to natural climate changes should be what is concentrated on – and for each country that is different
    This AGW stuff propogated by the UN is the greatest pseudo scientific fraud of our livetimes
    So let’s hold each our own Govts accountable for each of their Royal Commission findings if my proposal is adopted

  21. wes george says

    A Christian Science Monitor article about creepy liberalism doesn’t mention Climate Change policy since in the US cap and trade is totally dead, but it spookily describes the dissonance in our self-righteous Green/labor polity….

    …In his book “The Liberal Imagination,” published in 1950, Trilling pointed to the “dangers which lie in our most generous wishes.” Progressives, Trilling observed, believe that through the “rational direction of human life” they can alleviate misery. But the reformers, Trilling showed, are too often oblivious of the truth of their own motives….

    …In his 1947 novel “The Middle of the Journey,” Trilling probes this hidden impulse in his portrayal of Gifford Maxim, a character modeled on his Columbia schoolmate and legendary Soviet spy-turned-anti-Communist Whittaker Chambers. “And in the most secret heart of every intellectual … there lies hidden … the hope of power, the desire to bring his ideas to reality by imposing them on his fellow man,” Maxim says. This hope tempts the progressive to embrace coercive policies in the name of social equity. “The more we talk of welfare, the crueler we become,” Maxim says. “How can we possibly be guilty when we have in mind the welfare of others, and of so many others?”

    The “ultimate threat to human freedom,” Trilling wrote in an account of George Orwell, might well come from a “massive development of the social idealism of our democratic culture.” Such idealism is dangerous because the idealists have disguised their deepest motives even from themselves. In his essay on Henry James’s novel “The Princess Casamassima,” Trilling described the willfulness of the progressive reformer “who takes license from his ideals for the unrestrained exercise of power.” In today’s ostensibly benign social policies, there is more than a whiff of the coercive “will” Trilling dreaded, the “will which masks itself in virtue.”

    http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2011/0309/Before-NPR-scandal-a-warning-about-elite-liberals-compassion-turns-to-coercion

  22. Debbie says

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/were-overworked-warn-stressedout-politicians-20110312-1bsek.html

    Don’t tell me that they are suffering from time stress because of their own rules and their own attempts to enact reform policies, transition and social engineering?
    Well gee! What a revelation!
    I wonder if they have also realised that those same policies and rules that are starting to cause them stress are having exactly the same effects on the communities that they are targeting!
    How completely ironic!
    Maybe, just maybe they should do more listening and less posturing?

    And Paul,
    If you think for even a single second that the MDBP debacle has anything to do with The Federal Government nobly trying to save the environment from the raping of irrigated agriculture you REALLY need to rethink.
    The debacle is entirely a political battle that has been caused by the Federal Government using an ‘International Convention’ to muscle in on an Australian issue THAT SHOULD BE SOLVED BY AUSTRALIANS!
    They are merely using ‘The Environment’ as a thinly veiled excuse and that is why the whole process is unravelling before them.
    If they actually stuck with their original plans in the NWI and worked to negotiate properly with the State Govts and all stakeholders, including the environment lobby, we would be now much closer to true and sensible reform.
    What we have now is a hopeless and expensive mess. It is even getting messier because we have bureaucrats and politicians running around trying to cover their backsides instead of facing up to the actual problem and what needs to be actually done!
    The saddest part of all, which El Gordo has alluded to, is we are in fact repeating past mistakes.
    Common Sense and the Environment will end up being the biggest casualties.
    What a shame!
    MDB residents know it’s completely possible for irrigated agriculture and the Environment to peacefully and profitably co-exist. In the purpose built areas they have been doing that for years!
    Just remember that our wetlands are ephemeral and they suffered along with the rest of us during the drought BECAUSE IT DIDN”T RAIN!!!! Now that Mother Nature has decided to deliver excess rain, irrigated agriculture and our ephemeral wetlands are adding to each others’ bounty.
    I can categorically assure you that our bureaucrats and our politicians or our enacted ‘International Conventions’ had absolutely sweet FA to do with any of it.
    All they have done is put huge sections of our Australian Community under severe stress and spent a frightening amount of tax payers money!